Writes T. K. Coleman: We begin by dreaming. Once dreams are pursued, “the reality” sets in. But what we call “the reality” –sacrifices, hardships, compromises, setbacks, etc–is all a part of the dream. The realities that seem to contradict our dreams do not belong to some other realm that must be ignored or defeated. Those…
Tag: learning
To Better Take Care of One Another
Writes Free Your Kids: Just something I’ve been thinking about… Perhaps we’re doing it all wrong. Maybe the idea that one man and one woman get hitched, set-up their own distinct home, and raise their children (basically alone) is the cause of many of our current societal problems. Taking care of children is difficult. Even…
Schools as Black-Holes
Written by Butler Shaffer for LewRockwell.com. There is an old joke about how knowledge accumulates in universities: students enter college, knowing everything, and graduate knowing nothing. In this way does knowledge continue to grow within universities. My years of experience in what is referred to as “higher education” inform me that there is more than…
What They Want to Learn
School is Not For Learning
Written by Grace Llewellyn, as published at The Natural Child Project. Our brains and spirits are the freest things in the universe. Our bodies can live in chains, but our intellects cannot. It’s that simple. The mind will be free, or it will be dead. It can be numbed, quieted, and restrained so that it…
Can You “Enforce” Your Limits Without Force?
Written by Laura Markham for Aha! Parenting. This is a terrific question: How can we “enforce” our limits? The short answer is, we can’t force anyone to do anything. All we can do is help our child WANT to meet our expectations and help him develop the emotional regulation so he’s able to do so.…
When I Grow Up
Send him mail. “Insight for the Young and Unrestrained” is an original weekly column appearing every Thursday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Gregory V. Diehl. Gregory is a writer, musician, educator, and coach for young people at EnabledYouth.com. Archived columns can be found here. IYU-only RSS feed available here. When they asked me what I wanted to…
Outbursts and Negative Behavior
Writes Kicking it Unschool: One of the major turning points in our parenting journey was learning to see outbursts and negative behavior from the boys as signals their needs were not being met. There is no such things as negative behavior happening “for no reason”. There is always a reason. We just need to figure…
Unschooling in the World: Joyce Fetteroll
An Interview by Sandra Dodd. One of my favorite unschooling analysts is Joyce Fetteroll, of Medfield, Massachusetts. Joyce has been writing about unschooling since 1995, when her daughter, Kathryn, was four. Joyce has an engineering degree and worked for a while as a software engineer and technical writer for a communications company. Her husband, Carl,…
Learning to Think
Writes Free Your Kids: Our children cannot pinpoint Egypt on a map. They don’t know their multiplication tables. They know perhaps five U.S. Presidents, total. But they understand that they own their own bodies. They know an adult has no right to do something to them without their consent. They know that authority figures do…